Posthuman Existences and Ecofeminist Imaginaries in Laura Pugno’s Novels Sirene (2007) and La ragazza selvaggia (2016)

Abstract

This article offers an analysis of Laura Pugno's novels Sirene (2007) and La ragazza selvaggia (2016) through the perspectives of ecofeminism, feminist posthuman theory and anti-speciesist thought. In these novels Pugno explores the boundaries based on gender and species difference, but such an exploration does not result in a mere representation of the historically rooted Western binary oppositions - human/animal, man/woman, culture/nature - but rather in the continuous blurring of their demarcation lines. In this article I therefore analyze the ways in which these narratives challenge some of the identity assumptions and systems of domination on which the Western symbolic and social system is structured, in order to imagine forms of agency beyond the human and potential posthuman existences.